My So Called Life

Baconfest 2012

/ Shane / 7 Comments

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time of the year again. I present the 2nd Annual Halbach Baconfest:

This year’s Baconfest was conceptually very similar to last year’s. Bacon themed menu all day, bacon taste test, and, of course, there were shirts.

Nathan and Amanda hosted this year, so even though it was at our house, they did all the food preparation. I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome it is to have someone else do all the food preparation. Also, they did as much as they could ahead of time, which really saved us from having to cook non-stop all day, like we did last year. Good thing too, since we had a ballet recital to attend in the morning, and the afternoon was just too beautiful weather-wise to spend it indoors.

 

I thought the food overall was much better than last year (and not only because I didn’t have to make it). Last year everything was perfectly good, but a lot of stuff was sort of unremarkable. This year, there were a few things that weren’t particularly bacon-y, but they were still unique or interesting. Additionally, there were several things that really stood out this year, which was much improved over last year.

Halbach BaconFest 2012 Menu

Breakfast

Bacon-Fig Scones

and

Sandwich-Bacon with Scrambled Eggs

Lunch

Bacon-Stuffed Crust Pizza, Two Ways
Barbecue-chicken bacon and Bacon with sautéed Onion

Bacon Taste Testing

Four distinct bacons for the discriminating bacon consumer

Dinner

Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

and

Bacon-Stuffed Dough, Three Ways
Bacon-potato gnocchi pan seared in a bacon-butter sage sauce
Bacon wontons seared and steamed served with ginger-garlic dipping sauce
Bacon-pea pesto stuffed shells baked with bacon marinara sauce

Dessert

Sweet Bacon Cheesecake with Candied Bacon Topping

I want to specifically comment on the bacon cheesecake. My gut reaction was, “Say whaaa?” The combination of bacon and cheesecake did not sound appealing at all. And yet, it was so good! But strange. I don’t think I could really explain it to you without trying it. You absolutely can taste the bacon; it’s not one of those things where there’s some token bacon just to make it a “bacon” recipe. But the bacon combines with the sweetness to make something that’s delicious and totally unique. Without question the best bacon dessert recipe I have ever had (granted, that’s a low bar, because almost every bacon dessert I have ever had has been disgusting).

The Kevin Bacon movie this year was going to be Apollo 13, but by the end of the day we opted for board games instead. Sorry, Mr. Bacon, you were there in spirit. (Side note, are there any bacon related board games? Because if not, I think we have a money maker on our hands.)

I’m already looking forward to next year; I’ve already begun work on the logo.

Best. Tradition. Ever.

You might say it was a cake walk

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Every year my elementary school would have a big carnival. It was great, I loved it. It was a small school and thus a pretty small carnival, but then again, it had everything it needed to have: Moonwalk, dunk tank, karaoke, overpriced carnival food and 8 or 9 games of chance to win some crappy prizes.

We didn’t have a lot of money for tickets, and they always seemed to go fast. My main goal at the carnival was to maximize my profit: what was the most economically advantageous way to spend my tickets? For example, buying a personal pan pizza from the Pizza Hut truck cost like 7,000,000 tickets. So, even though I desperately wanted a personal pan pizza, I knew my mom wasn’t going to let me starve so it wasn’t really worth using up every single ticket to my name. The Moonwalk was like 5 tickets for 10 milliseconds or something. This was somewhat worthwhile, because a Moonwalk is awesome, but you still didn’t have anything to show for it when your 10 milliseconds were done (other than a stitch in your side, because bouncing in a Moonwalk is hard work!)

Then I discovered the cake walk.

For some reason on this particular year, the cake walk just wasn’t that popular. I don’t know if people didn’t know it was there, or if it just wasn’t considered cool to devour an entire cake all by yourself, or what. In any case, I had that baby to myself. For the low price of one ticket, you were entered into the cake walk. Numbers would be drawn until a winner was chosen, so if nobody was on the number, they’d pick again. In other words, if you are the ONLY PERSON DOING THE CAKE WALK, you were guaranteed a cake.

Like taking candy from a baby.

Even if there were 2 or 3 or even 4 people participating, your odds of winning an ENTIRE CAKE are pretty good. So while my friends were bouncing their heads off in the Moonwalk, or winning tootsie rolls on the spinning wheel of chance, I spent every single last one of my tickets on the cake walk and took home in the neighborhood of 5 cakes.

Carnival – 0, Shane – 1

Standard India Restaurant

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the weekend, we checked out Standard India Restaurant.

We discovered this place by seeing it on Check Please, followed by seeing it come by on Groupon. We didn’t buy the Groupon, but I guess we should have, since we ended up here anyway.

Standard India specializes in something called thali, which involves stainless steel plates that are big enough to hold your plate as well as a huge series of small stainless steel bowls or cups. Even the naan comes in something that looks like a stainless steel bowling ball. In other words, there is a lot of stainless steel. You may recall the awesome Indian-style tiffin lunch boxes our kids got for Christmas:

Yeah, like that. As a side bonus, you can spin your plate like a Lazy Susan!

We got the Grand Buffet, and it was awesome. In addition to all the items on the buffet, this is still thali, so you get like 5 or 6 little bowls of things to try brought out to the table, as well as the regular stuff, like naan and samosas. In fact, I think I could have filled up on just the extra stuff they brought out, and not hit the buffet at all. But I didn’t, I hit the buffet. Twice. Everything was so good, with just the right amount of spice. Even the desert was perfect. We also ordered a mango lassi for the kids to share, and we could hardly get Oliver to set it down long enough to eat anything. The food was absolutely the star of the show.

We had heard that the place was kid-friendly, and I found that to be true, despite the fact that there were no other kids in the restaurant. The owners are SUPER friendly, and they really interacted with the kids. In fact, I’m pretty sure they gave us a table that was reserved, even though we didn’t have a reservation, because of the kids. They also only charged us $4 for Evie’s buffet and nothing for Oliver’s, which is a pretty good discount, considering the adult buffet was like $19.

$4 would be an absolute steal for the amount of food you get, and Evie paid back their kindness by refusing to try anything. Luckily we had Oliver, who more than made up for her. It all works out in the end; I like to think that Oliver had the $4 buffet and Evie was free. There really is no joy in taking Evie to a restaurant. She begs to go, but then she won’t try anything. And even if she did, she wouldn’t like it, because she is dead set against it from the outset. Since this happens every time, I’m not really sure what she is expecting to be different. Oh well, at least she ate her weight in naan.

If you are going, I would definitely get reservations. We didn’t have any and we got right in, however, that appeared to be the exception, not the rule. The place was packed, and even with reservations, most people had to wait. So I would go better safe than sorry on that front. Also, many or even most people were taking advantage of the BYOB, so feel free to do that as well.

I would be remiss to mention mention that it wasn’t all roses and kittens though. At the end we had to wait almost 20 minutes for our check. I’m inclined not to hold that against them, since they were pretty busy and for all I know it was a one time thing. But I felt pretty bad because there was a very large number of people waiting for tables, and here we were, sitting at the front table right in front of everybody, clearly done and clearly not leaving. The kids were restless as well, since we were done eating and it was past their bedtime. Eventually Sara had to take the kids and leave while I sat and waited. I never did figure out what the problem was, but it definitely left me with a bad taste in my mouth (not literally, believe me). However, like I said, these things happen sometimes, so who knows.

All in all, I would definitely recommend the place.

The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Awhile ago I blogged about Digital Underground and how they led me to George Clinton and Funk in general. On the strength of that article, I was contacted by bassist John Heintz who was wrapping up a new project with said funk legend George Clinton: a new funk “supergroup” known as The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown.

When John asked me if he could give me a “sneak peek” at the album before it was released, I naturally jumped all over it.

It’s hard to say The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown is a group (it’s hard to classify The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown at all actually); it’s more a rotating collaboration between anybody who has dabbled in any way with Funk. From the superstars to the up and coming, from P-Funk to The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, from Kool and the Gang to Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band. (I’m sorry, but how are you not going to listen to someone named Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band?) In fact, the collaboration includes almost 100 musicians in total.

Therefore, it is not surprising that there’s something for everyone on the album. Seriously, there are so many different styles, so many different instruments, so many different types of vocals, so many musicians who are just frankly at the top of their game, that it would be hard for anybody to say there wasn’t something they liked in there.

“College Funk” won Funk/Groove song of the year at the 2011 Hollywood Music in Media Awards, but for my money, “Room 2012” was the best track. Again, there’s a lot of variety, which runs from “Platinum”, which is more of your typical Funk song, to wailing steel guitars on “Wake Me Up” (side note, Ralph Roddenberry’s vocals knock it out of the park there).

I gave the album to a co-worker of mine who happens to be a jazz saxophonist, and whose musical opinion you should trust a lot more than mine, and he liked it. In fact, I told John I would not blog about The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown unless I genuinely liked the music. I’m blogging about it now. What does that tell you?

Volume 1 by The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown releases this month.

What kind of person did you used to be in high school?

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Lately when I am talking to people, I have been playing a game in my head: what was this person like in high school?

High school is such a funny time in our lives. 4 short years with about 20 years of repercussions (at least!) immediately to follow. In high school, everybody is broken down into cliques or types. It’s very one-dimensional, as if your entire personality can be summed up in one word: nerd, jock, goth, prep, whatever it is. But when you’re in high school, it also happens to be kind of true. You just don’t have all that much personality yet. In fact, in the name of belonging, your assigned label kind of becomes your defacto personality. You dress the part, pick up the speech mannerisms, start to like the same types of activities, etc. One might argue that in high school you don’t even have a personality yet, so in the meantime, you just use the one assigned to you.

But when you get to be adults, all of that sort of goes away (the personality thing goes away, not the deep psychological scars…or maybe that’s just me). I think a lot of it is just growing into your personality. It turns out that people aren’t so one-dimensional. Shy people find confidence, outgoing people learn there’s always someone cooler than you. Jocks find out they like computers, and nerds find out they like sports (ping pong is a sport, right?) Everybody kind of realizes we all have more in common than we thought. Adulthood is the great equalizer.

Nowadays, if I run into someone from my high school (virtually or otherwise), I’m just excited to have run into someone from my high school. Suddenly people who I never even spoke to in high school are like old friends. We can reminisce about our school or hometown, and I’m honestly interested to hear what they’re up to.

So lately as I’m talking to people, I start to wonder: is this person someone whom I would have talked to in high school? What were they like? Would we have gotten along back then?

It’s harder to guess than you would think. Nerds are probably the easiest to pick out, but it’s not a sure thing. Besides, haven’t you heard? These days it’s cool to be a “nerd” (as a true, not-in-quotes nerd who suffered for it, I take a little exception to that, but that’s another blog post).

It stands to reason that at least some of the people I talk to as adults wouldn’t have given me the time of day as high schoolers (it stands to reason, because at least some of the people I talk to as adults are girls).  Just playing the odds, some of you had to be cheerleaders, or captains of the football team, or drama dorks (Drama Queens? What’s the PC term for someone who haunted the drama department in high school? Phantoms of the Drama Department?), or even just band nerds, which were a whole separate breed of nerd that ran on a sort of parallel track, but didn’t cross over.

So what were you like in high school? Anybody find it particularly humorous to think back on how they were perceived back then vs. now? Any Mean Girls want to fess up and admit that they wouldn’t have talked to me back then?